Glastonbury debut for d&b OCA amps

UK-based company Skan PA implemented d&b’s D80 amps at the festival’s Other Stage.

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Launched in January of this year, d&b audiotechnik’s D80 amplifier with Open Control Architecture (OCA) debuted at Glastonbury Festival 2014, with UK-based Skan PA implementing them at the festival’s Other Stage.

Tom Tunney, Skan's system engineer for the festival comments: "We were desperately waiting for the implementation of this protocol to become available. When I finally got my hands on a beta version, we immediately deployed it at Glastonbury to put it through the rigours of a festival to prove its stability and performance.

“This control and monitoring is a milestone for us, it makes the already outstanding D80 amplifier a cutting edge product. All happy faces here. Having used the same subwoofer array here for the last three years it was just astonishing to hear the array perform measurably louder, while the energy efficiency of the D80 saw lower power consumption. We are looking forward to deploying this system on our up and coming tours."

Marc Weber, the product manager behind the development of the D80 at d&b adds: "At d&b we have been using CAN-Bus for such a function with our systems since the 1990s, because it is very stable. It was also easy to implement, relatively inexpensive, but a little on the slow side by today's bandwidth standards.

"The new D80 needs to provide remote information very quickly, especially when adjusting EQs across multiple channels in live situations, so the foundation of the OCA Alliance was an opportunity d&b willingly joined."

The release version of d&b R1 Remote control software V2.2.1, which incorporates the OCA protocol to communicate over Ethernet with D80 amplifiers, is available to download from d&b audiotechnik's website.

French rental company Melpomen has provided the audio kit for the rock and metal festival its inception in 2006. This was the first year the company’s Nexo STM system was deployed for Hellfest's two main stages.